Drive letter reassigns in Win10 v1909

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I have a Windows 10 Hp laptop running version 1909. I connect to a network with the drive letter F. Recently every time I turn the laptop on after being off it assigns the letter F to a usb that’s plugged in for the external mouse & keyboard. I need to reassign the usb drive a different letter to be able to connect to the network using the F drive. Any suggestions on how to keep the letter F  mapped network drive from being assigned to usb drives? Thanks!

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The usual advice for network drives (and other ‘virtual’ drives) is to assign them drive letters working backwards from ‘Z’ (avoiding ‘Q’ in case you currently use or may be going to use Microsoft Office at some point… it’s Click-2-Run virtualisation uses this letter).

This is specifically because of the algorithm used to assign drive letters automatically in order. (The original Microsoft TechNet article explaining this has gone, together with nearly all the previous TechNet info. The best I could find was this Wayback Machine entry.)

Manually assigning drive letters is possible (from an account in the Administrators group) but there’s a couple of gotchas, particularly with USB devices which – upon connection – write loads of info to the registry, including the drive letter used (for example, as entries in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices key) and *don’t* remove the info when disconnected.

This can lead to a situation where – if the USB device is not present and you assign the previously used drive letter to a network drive – you may find you cannot access the network drive.

Conversely, if you assign the next available (but never-before-used) drive letter to a network drive then subsequently connect, say, a USB hard disk whilst not connected to the network… you may find that the USB hard disk will not mount itself.

Whilst there are 3rd-party utilities that try to resolve this situation, IMO they are less effective than just re-assigning the network drives new drive letters working from ‘Z’ backwards as Microsoft advises (or use A: and/or B: now that floppy drives are a thing of the past).

If the network drive letter assignment is out of your control (in a work environment, for example) then post back and I can describe a workaround involving removal of the USB device’s connection history from the registry.

Hope this helps…

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Elly

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Open Disk Management. (Win R, diskmgmt.msc)
Right click on the USB drive shown as a drive letter.
Select “Change drive letter and paths”.

Windows will remember this setting.

cheers, Paul

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